Mozilla Joins George Soros’s Efforts In Launching A Strike Against “Fake News”

Mozilla, the non-profit organization which runs the Firefox internet browser, said Wednesday it was launching an effort against “fake news,” as fact-checking software backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and George Soros got its first run-out in public to shape our Orwellian nightmare of future truth arbiters.

Mozilla said it was “investing in people, programs and projects” in a new initiative to “disrupt misinformation online” calling for a “Mozilla Information Trust Initiative,” or MITI for short, Business Insiderreported.

They further stated the “internet’s ability to power democratic society suffers greatly” because of fabricated stories, such as the “Pope endorsing Donald Trump for the U.S. presidency” or a “dead FBI agent killed in a mysterious fire with information on former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton” – just two examples of stories that turned out to be bogus.

Mozilla’s innovations director, Katharina Borchert, toldAFP that the organization was working on tools for Firefox and better online education with media groups, universities, and tech activists.

The “Mozilla Information Trust Initiative” comes just as an automated real-time fact-checking engine dubbed the “bullshit detector” was demonstrated in London.

The group that created the fact-checking engine, Full Fact foundation, is backed by Omidyar and our favorite billionaire tycoon Soros.

The organization stated its software is “capable” of spotting lies in real-time and was used to fact-check a live debate at the House of Commons. How that objective was achieved isn’t clear since it’s likely automated A.I., but algorithms are not 100% accurate.

“As the proponents of propaganda and misinformation become more sophisticated in their use of technology, it is important that fact checkers do not fall behind in our fight against it,” Full Fact said.

“This is an important investment in the future of fact-checking,” Stephen King, of the Omidyar Network, told The Guardian.

“You only have to look at the number of initiatives that have risen up to address this challenge, either by tech companies or other organizations to see how worrying this phenomenon is to so many,” Borchert added.

I worry more about those who want to act as fact checkers, blatantly ignoring propaganda and fake news by the MSM while targeting alternative media and dictating what is and isn’t important for public consumption.

“Whether it’s become a big enough priority is perhaps a better question,” Borchert said, arguing that it was time for rival news organizations to “rally around” each other to confront the spread of fake news.

Then you have Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, planning to launch a crowd-funded news service called Wikitribune to help combat fake news.

So you have all these people, some of whom have even once advocated for a free and open Internet, now advocating for controlling the flow of information under the moniker of “fake news.”

How about all the fake news spread by the CIA and intelligence services called planted propaganda usually for pushing war? Especially as a new report questions the veracity of claims made by a shady firm Cloudstrike that “Russia hacked the election” – how about that fake news?

Putting the future of what we believe in anyone’s hands, let alone artificial intelligence, seems reckless; but a system backed by Soros and Omidyar seems like a dangerously stupid idea that can only lead to a path paved toward Orwellian censorship the likes of which even George Orwell couldn’t have imagined.

Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post and is Director of Content for Coinivore. Follow Aaron at Twitter and Steemit. This article is Creative Commons and can be republished in full with attribution.

Federal Court Rules Citizens Have No Right to Film Politicians & Police in Public

Contradicting the rulings of six others federal courts, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals annihilated free speech rights in upholding a district court decision stating citizens do not have the right to film public officials — politicians, police, and others — in public.

In affirming the decision of the lower court to dismiss, the Eighth Circuit effectively ended free speech activist Matthew Akins’ challenge to the Columbia, Missouri, Police Department, which he accuses of unlawfully stopping and arresting him on multiple occasions — though nearly all charges were later dropped — as he filmed their encounters with the public, in public.

Akins says the spate of arrests and harassment from law enforcement is brazen retaliation for the nature of his activist work — filming officers on the job.

As a journalist and founder of Citizens for Justice in 2011, a group committed to monitoring police for accountability purposes, Akins frequently stopped to record officers’ interactions with the general public — a tactic employed by a plethora of civilian impartial observation groups to stem an epidemic of police violence and veritable impunity in courts, so common to law enforcement officers who misbehave.

Judge Nanette Laughrey penned in the stunning decision Columbia Police officers indeed had probable cause to arrest Akins each time, and — again, contrary to previous rulings from six circuit courts —that “he has no constitutional right to videotape any public proceeding he wishes to.”

Attorney Stephen Wyse already filed an appeal on Wednesday for the court to rehear the case — originally filed against Boone County Prosecutor Dan Knight, two former Boone County assistant prosecuting attorneys, and several members of the Columbia Police Department — as he contendedunequivocally, prior,

“You can’t target journalists because you don’t like their reporting.”

“Wyse took issue with Laughrey’s decision to stay on the case, despite his request she recuse herself. Laughrey’s husband, Chris Kelly, was the head of a city task force on infrastructure, which could have skewed her decisions in a case against the city, Wyse claimed. While federal law does call for a judge’s recusal, the appeals court said nothing in Akins’ case rose to the level of bias or prejudice against his case.”

While the topic of filming the police — of particular interest to law enforcement accountability activists, First Amendment advocates, and others concerned for decaying free speech rights — appeared in federal court before, Laughrey’s ruling goes against precedence established by the First, Third, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits, which decided the Constitution guarantees the right to film public officials in public settings, as long as recording does not interfere.

In fact, Judge Thomas Ambro wrote the decision for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a similar casecomprised of separate instances in which Philadelphia law enforcement actively thwarted the efforts of two citizens, Amanda Geraci and Richard Fields, to film arrests. Both sued for violations of their civil rights, and — like many other litigants — won.

“The First Amendment protects the public’s right of access to information about their officials’ public activities,” Ambro clarified, adding that access “is particularly important because it leads to citizen discourse” on public and private issues — an exalted exercise of that preeminent protection. The government, ruled the judge, is prohibited constitutionally from “limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw.”

American law enforcement, on the whole, has not responded hat graciously to civilians whipping out cell phones and video cameras to record encounters in public — though filming police can indeed provide additional pictorial and audio evidence in the event of contention or disputation.

“Bystander videos provide different perspectives than police and dashboard cameras, portraying circumstances and surroundings that police videos often do not capture,” Ambro continued. “Civilian video also fills the gaps created when police choose not to record video or withhold their footage from the public.”

Laughrey, however, broke ranks in a manner which could portend a precarious existence of certain First Amendment rights — rights which had previously been assumed by the public and averred in peer courts. States comprising the Eighth Circuit are Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota.

“The First Amendment is a core American value,” Wyse asserted in a press statement following the decision’s astonishing departure from precedent. “The right to free speech and a free press are central to our liberty and our ability to hold our government accountable. This holding of the 8th Circuit undermines the basic rights of Missourians and the citizens of the six other 8th Circuit states and undermines the First Amendment rights for all Americans.”

Reports indicate Akins — barring an unlikely rehearing in the Eighth Circuit Court — may indeed appeal his case to the Supreme Court. Because multiple federal judges have upheld the right to film police and public officials as a constitutionally-protected activity on multiple occasions, the ramifications of Laughrey’s ruling may not be as far-reaching and detrimental as appears now — but the ultimate litmus test seems inevitably poised for SCOTUS.

In the meantime, irascible law enforcement officers keen to prevent civilians from filming their activities would do well to remember two crucial points: recording public officials keeps them responsible and accountable for their actions — but can also protect them in situations of disputing claims. After all, raw video recordings — not police, officials, or citizens — have no need of mendacity and duplicity.

“We ask much of our police,” Ambro wrote in the July decision. “They can be our shelter from the storm. Yet officers are public officials carrying out public functions, and the First Amendment requires them to bear bystanders recording their actions. This is vital to promote the access that fosters free discussion of governmental actions, especially when that discussion benefits not only citizens but the officers themselves.”

Laughrey, unfortunately, did not agree — and now the public has yet another constitutionally-protected right left dangling by a fraying thread.

“Ernst received [a] parcel bomb in the mail, held it in his hands, wondered why it was so heavy, and his instinct told him that there was something wrong with it. He took it to the police who exploded it with a robot. That one caused a huge police investigation – if I remember correctly, 7,000 police surveillance hours.”

I have told many of my students that if they are not willing to take logic seriously or have no desire to follow the truth wherever it may lead, then they should never start studying philosophy. There are basically nine rules of logic and you can pretty much use them when discussing any subject—be it science, history, mathematics, etc.

If a person decides to write metaphysical things about science or history, then the project must be logical. If it is not logical, then it must be thrown out, for there can never be serious contradictions between real science and logic. It’s just that simple. (And this is one reason why I do not subscribe to the idea that Jewish behavior is genetic.) And one needn’t be a historian or a scientist to realize that certain ideas aren’t logical at all.

For example, Stephen Hawking and his co-author Leonard Mlodinow declare in The Grand Design that “Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing…”[1] In a similar vein, Daniel Dennett of Tufts University declares that the universe “creates itself ex nihilo,” and that, he believes, is “the ultimate bootstrapping trick.”[2] Peter Adkins of Oxford likewise gives allegiance to this principle, calling it the “Cosmic Bootstrap.” For Adkins, “space-time generates its own dust in the process of its own self-assembly.”[3]

Any logical problem with these extraordinary claims? Well, plenty. If the universe created itself, that means that the universe had to be in existence before it created itself! This is not only self-contradictory but completely incompatible with all the known laws of science and human experience. As Oxford mathematician and philosopher John C. Lennox puts it,

“If we say that ‘X creates Y,’ we presuppose the existence of X in the first place in order to bring Y into existence. That is a simple matter of understanding what the words ‘X creates Y’ mean. If, therefore, we say ‘X creates X,’ we imply that we are presupposing the existence of X in order to account for the existence of X. This is obviously self-contradictory and thus logically incoherent—even if we put X equal to the universe! To presuppose the existence of the universe to account for its own existence sounds like something out of Alice in Wonderland, not science.”[4]

Logic is essentially the chord that holds human beings together. It is our way of communicating with one another. If this central element is missing in any conversation or dialogue, then chaos will inexorably ensue.

This brings us to our point here. In an article which has just been published by the Toronto Sun, Mark Bonokoski declares that Ernst Zundel “deserved agony, but got none.”[5]There are numerous problems with this assertion. Suppose you came back from work after a long and laborious day and then found out that your house has been burned to the ground. Literally. What would you call that? Celebration? Isn’t that agony? And would you enjoy at least four assassination attempts on your life? You see, this is what Ernst Zundel had to go through. Ingrid Rimland, Zundel’s wife, told me last year that at one point,

“Ernst received [a] parcel bomb in the mail, held it in his hands, wondered why it was so heavy, and his instinct told him that there was something wrong with it. He took it to the police who exploded it with a robot. That one caused a huge police investigation – if I remember correctly, 7,000 police surveillance hours. The undercover dragnet eventually led to a storage facility and a Jewish woman named Bloom who had bought the terrorists a computer. Two or three street punks were arrested and then later let go. ‘National security!’”[6]

When I started writing about Nazi Germany back in 2013, Ingrid sent me their documentary film which traces Zundel’s political persecution to the Khazarian Bankster Cult.[7] She also sent me the Leuchter Reports with the note: “You are a friend I would be proud to have.” She said that whenever I am back in the States, I am more than welcome to come by their beautiful home and hang around.

She also told me that Zundel never wrote the booklet “The Hitler We Loved and Why.” “Nor did he publish it,” she said.

“It is an innocuous little non-book. It’s only value to the Jews is the title. It was written by someone named Thompson and published by the Liberty Bell of West Virginia, now defunct since the owner has died. Ernst merely supplied the pictures since he had vast archival photos of the Hitler times until the Jews burned down his home and office. This story about Ernst having written that booklet has been forever repeated by friend and foe alike – it is the Jews’ favorite smear, even though we have corrected it numerous times.”

——————————————

Going back to Bonokoski, he argues that Zundel should have been tormented even more because he has incited “racial hatred.” Let us again grant this fallacious argument for a second and turn the table around. Let us bring in Ilya Ehrenburg, the Jewish Bolshevik, to the table. Here’s what he said about the Germans:

“Germans are not human beings. Henceforth the word German means to us the most terrible curse. From now on the word German will trigger your rifle…If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day. If you think that instead of you, the man next to you will kill him, you have not understood the threat.

“If you do not kill the German, he will kill you. If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German before combat. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman.

“If you kill one German, kill another—there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days; do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the German—this is your old mother’s prayer. Kill the German—this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German—this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill.”

“We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel….Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.”

MK Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan himself declared that Palestinians “are beasts, they are not human.” MK Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan added: “A Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual.”

If Bonokoski is really concerned about “racial hatred,” why doesn’t he fight the Israeli regime as well? Doesn’t he know that the Israeli officials have been saying disgusting things about Palestinians and the Goyim for decades? Who is Bonokoski really fooling this time? Here is again what Israeli historian Benny Morris has said:

“A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.”[8]

If Bonokoski does not support this pernicious ideology, why doesn’t he support us in fighting the Israeli regime? Why doesn’t he challenge them to go by the moral and political order? Why was he spending his career fighting just one man? Is that fair? Bonokoski said that he began to learn about Zundel in 1978, and this writer wasn’t even born!

A number of President Trump’s supporters have asked him to cut ties with his National Security Adviser, General McMaster.

Mc Master is extremely brilliant and considered to be right at the top of the field in matters of strategy and Russian arms. However, his work in the National Security Council reveals that he continues to have contact with the Team Obama and this casts doubt on the decisions he has taken.

First, General Mc Master has fired several members of the Council, which was unjustified in at least two cases. All the members fired were known to be opposed to the agreement that the Obama Administration reached with Iran.

Second, it appears that in April, he gave permanent access to classified information to his predecessor, Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser, Susan Rice. As it happens, Congress is investigating Rice because she is suspected of spying on the Trump team during the electoral campaign and the transition period.

Third, for the last eleven years General Mc Master worked for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). This think thank was used by the Obama Administration to “sell” the Iran deal. This operation was directly financed by George Soros, either directly by the Soros Foundation or through its intermediary, Ploughshares Fund. Furthermore IISS’s principal donors are multinationals that are currently trying to get a foot in Iran. Finally on 5 June 2017, John Kerry, the former Secretary of State invited by Ploughshares Fund, declared that General Mc Master was the best resource to follow through with the Iran deal.

Media Matters for America, which is David Brock’s firm and which is also funded by George Soros, has leapt to Mc Master’s defense.